


You Want A Battle? Here’s A War

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hydra Won (Marvel), Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, On the Run, Pre-WinterIron, Secret Identities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: Two strangers running from the same threat meet and consider an alliance (on more levels than one).Fills the "expats" square on my Round 4 Tony Stark Bingo card number 4028. (required info collected below)
Relationships: Tony Stark/James "Bucky" Barnes
Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009245
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	You Want A Battle? Here’s A War

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm going for a blackout this round! Brace yourselves y'all, I may be throwing a bunch of weird little tales at ya between now and spring. lol. This is a prompt I was stuck on, but conversation at the last bingo party in the TSB server sparked this vignette set in a very different AU.
> 
> Bingo specifics:  
> Card Number: 4028  
> Square Filled (Letter AND number AND prompt) K4, expats  
> Ship/Main Pairing: pre-Winteriron  
> Rating (Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit) gen  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: Alternate Universe - No Powers, On the Run, Secret Identities, Alternate Universe - Hydra Won (Marvel), pre-Winteriron  
> Summary: Two strangers running from the same threat meet and consider an alliance (on more levels than one).

Hans saw the men coming from across the lodge. There were three of them, wearing brand new and horribly ugly ski sweaters and carrying gear that had never seen a slope. They stuck out like sore thumbs, and he thanked any entity that might be listening that his last class had just finished. He dodged a couple of ski bunnies before they could start trying to coax him up to their rooms, leaving them pouting as he tried to flee without looking like he was fleeing. 

Night was falling, and the slopes were closing. He couldn’t help but tsk to himself in scorn, even considering the peril he was in, that his pursuers had sent idiots that didn’t even bother to learn how a ski resort’s schedule typically ran. They were the only ones in the place walking around with skis on their shoulders, while everybody who was actually there to, you know, _ski_ had changed to loungewear and was relaxing with hot drinks of varying types. None of that idiocy meant a damn thing, though, if they spotted him and put two and two together. All he could do was hope they were looking for a sharply dressed businessman with dark hair, dark eyes, an impeccable goatee, and several inches taller; not a tramp ski instructor with bleach-tipped spikes, blue contacts, a hipster's soul patch on his chin, and no lifts in his shabby boots.

Without consciously intending to, his pace picked up until by the time he reached the nearest elevator bank just off the lodge lobby, he was almost running. He fought not to hop from foot to foot anxiously or peer behind him while the ancient lift took its own sweet fucking time. That didn’t mean he didn’t almost scream when a gloved hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“Hans, good evening,” a familiar voice said in German. He relaxed, a little; it was just the lodge’s night security guard. The lodge’s _very sexy_ night security guard. It was going to pain him to have to ghost the guy, when he’d spent the past couple of months since the man was hired trying to subtly suggest he’d love to get into those tight uniform pants of his. 

He glanced over and met the other man’s grey-blue eyes. “Good evening, Iacov. I thought this was your day off.”

The big man shrugged. “I just wanted to check on a few things.”

The man Hans used to be would have seized that opportunity to drop some double entendres and do a bit of shameless flirting. He thought he might anyway, now, for distraction. It surely wouldn’t hurt, would it, unless he got punched in the face for it. Then again, a solid punch would be a valid excuse for some plastic surgery that would make him that much harder to find. Still undecided, he opened his mouth, then froze when out of the corner of his eye he spied the fake skiers meandering toward him. His brain went staticky, unable to choose between staying very still like a rabbit trying to evade the eyes of the predator, or fleeing as casually as the panic-driven pounding of his heart would allow.

“Hans?” Iacov’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Are you all right?”

The elevator dinged and its doors opened. Hans grabbed the hand still resting on his shoulder and fairly dragged the other man in. He spun, backed into the farthest corner and pulled Iacov in to block the suspects’ view. For a crazy instant he thought about kissing Iacov to provide even more cover—that lot was the kind whose stomachs would almost certainly be turned by the sight of two males engaging in a public display of affection. For an even crazier instant, he thought Iacov might just let him. 

Sure enough, the threesome walked by; one slowed and glanced into the elevator, curled his lip, and moved on. Hans let out a breath he hadn’t consciously realized he was holding, and decided he was going to have to pay up on the check his body had just written. It wasn’t like he wasn’t attracted to Iacov already, the sudden snugness in the crotch of his ski leggings proved that point (and how pathetic was he that that happened right in the middle of him fearing for his life?), but he had hoped to be able to have some actual conversation first. Then again, he’d been a man-whore before, he could do it again. 

He steeled himself, and started to slap that old Tony-Fucking-Stark fake smile on his face. Then he looked up, his mouth halfway fixed to crank up some line of seductive bullshit, and it all died on the vine because the stormy eyes on him were entirely too knowing for somebody who didn’t know him at all. “Who are you hiding from?” Iacov asked.

He tried to restart the BS, but nothing agreed to come out, and when something finally did, to his horror, it was the truth. “Somebody who wants me, dead or alive.”

“Something you did?” Iacov’s inquiry was entirely too nonchalant, considering his beefy thigh was practically between Tony’s legs.

“Something I wouldn’t do.”

The guard nodded slowly. “Three Caucasian males, speaking English. Do you?” Numbly, Tony nodded and the other man switched languages smoothly. “Kitted out the way somebody who’s never been to a ski resort thinks people at a ski resort would be?”

Tony’s knees nearly gave way, and all he could muster was another jerky nod. A sudden terrible thought flashed through his head. _Fuck, is he with them?_ If so, Tony had just boxed himself in, and the best he could do was fight enough to make this solid wall of muscle kill him, because he was not going to be made their slave. “I’m not one of them,” Iacov added, as if reading the way Tony’s body tensed and his eyes flicked toward the elevator door that still stood open. “They are the things I came to check out, though.” Without releasing Tony’s eyes with his, he reached behind him and slapped a button on the wall, and the doors slid silently shut. “Let’s go have some coffee and compare notes.”

“This isn’t exactly how I envisioned our first date,” Tony snarked, because evidently he really didn’t have any self-control and he’d rather go out running his mouth. 

To his chagrin, Iacov looked surprised; and then, was that a slight curl of pleasure quirking the corner of his plush mouth as the elevator rose? “Me neither,” he admitted.

They settled with coffee in the lodge’s glassed-in rooftop lounge, practically deserted this late. Tony found it mildly amusing the way they each jockeyed for a seat with back to solid wall and a view of all the entrances. They ended up sitting side by side, which, if one of their pursuers saw them, would just add to the air of lovers or at least bedmates. “Okay, for starters,” Tony began, "if we’re going to work together on this, you should probably know, my name isn’t Hans.”

“Didn’t think so.” The other man’s English bore a faint but distinct Brooklyn accent, and Tony suspected the name he went by was about as much his own, which was to say, not at all. “You just don’t look like a Hans.”

“What, my shallow slutty persona didn’t work?”

“Works for people who see what they expect to see.” Iacov sipped his steaming cup. Tony paused, reminded anew that this guy was more than a mere security guard, far more than met the eye. “I’m more interested,” he continued, “in who you think those guys are, and why they’d be looking for you.”

“I think they’re part of a group called HYDRA.” Tony did not fail to notice the fractional stiffening of his companion’s body at the name. _He knows_ , he thought, but continued anyway. “They were Nazi fellow travelers back in the dim and misty of WW Two, supposedly put down before the end of the war. Operative word there being supposedly. Truth was, they slipped into the US, some under the guise of Project Paperclip, and took over the most secret American intel agency, SHIELD, from the inside. 

“My old man found out about them, tried to double-cross them, and got himself killed. A friend of his was SHIELD’s director, well, in name at least, and she shielded my mom and me—pun not intended. When mom died, though, and Director Carter went down with dementia, they came after me to recruit me. Our family business was—is—a defense contractor. I designed gear for them, but the corporate end never interested me. Howard’s second, Obadiah Stane, ran everything after Howard kicked it, but HYDRA didn’t go to him. He’s bright enough to keep SI going, but as crooked as a barrel of snakes; in all probability, he’d have tried to scam them. Wasn’t worth the trouble, according to the all too anonymous-looking character they sent to talk to me. They wanted my genius—sorry, modesty’s never been my strong suit. I told him they could all go to hell.” Tony suppressed a sigh. “He reminded me of the power they had, the connections. Either I went along, or they would see me dead: outright, or conveniently shanked in a prison exercise yard while locked up for a crime I didn’t commit but they could arrange for me to have in the eyes of the law.” He took a slug of his cooling coffee. “So, I bailed,” he finished. “and I’ve been running ever since.”

“On the lam then,” Iacov said.

Tony snorted. “You sound like an old episode of Dragnet.”

“I’m older than I look,” the other countered. “An expatriate, then.” 

“I prefer ‘exiled for the good of the realm,” Tony sniffed, and Iacov actually laughed out loud a little. It was entirely too attractive on him. “You knew who they were,” Tony dared ask, “before we crossed paths, or at least you knew they weren’t here to schuss the black diamond slope.”

“I’m…in hiding from them too,” Iacov finally said after a long few seconds of silence. 

“You were one of them?” Tony’s stomach caught the lift straight down into his boots. 

“I belonged to them,” Iacov snapped. “That’s not the same.”

Tony frowned, but had to concede. “No, that wouldn’t be. But how—” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Sounds like you and I have the same goal in mind, to lay low till they give up and leave.”

“All things being equal,” Iacov disagreed, “I’d rather they never left here.”

“As in, never made it back to report?” Tony pondered. “That’d just attract their bosses' suspicion here, though.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Depends. If they were trying to schuss the black diamond, with all that shiny new gear that I’d bet ten bucks they don’t know how to use, against a master ski instructor like, oh I dunno, like my boy Hans? Terrible accidents do happen out there sometimes.”

Tony’s mouth opened in wonder and evil delight. “Most likely, we’d both need to be ready to bail immediately after,” he pointed out. 

“That bother you?” Iacov challenged. 

“Not really, no. You?”

“Not a damn bit. I _hate_ the cold,” Iacov gave a little shiver that made Tony’s heart hurt, and flexed his left hand as if in pain. Tony noticed for the first time he had never taken off the worn, dark leather glove on that hand, and wondered if HYDRA had harmed him. _I belonged to them_ , he had said. “So, Tony Stark, you up for helping me wreak a little havoc?”

“I didn’t tell you my name.”

“No need to. I keep up with the news. Only one hella handsome and notoriously buck-wild heir to an American arms empire vanished off everybody’s radar in recent years.”

 _He thinks I’m handsome?_ Tony thought, and suppressed the urge to preen. “Hell yeah, I’m up for it,” he said, thrilled at the thought of striking back, of finally being able to turn and make a stand. “I’ve got some blueprints, some ideas for tech, stuff I’ve been working on in fits and starts. Might be of use, if I could ever settle in one place long enough to cobble some things together.”

“Ever been to Bucharest?” Iacov surprised him by offering.

“Actually, I have to admit I haven’t.”

“Nice town. Laid-back, good solid food, lots of parks, one of Dracula’s palaces to draw inspiration from. I think you might like it.”

“Vlad the Impaler? Hell of a role model to choose.”

“Hey, man was bloodthirsty, but not literally biting necks. He’s a hero there, remembered for being harsh but fair. Didn’t back down, fought to get his inheritance back. Anyway, there’s a place there, a little better than a bolthole, but room enough for two.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “I’m in, Iacov, or whatever your name is.”

“James,” he said, “though you can call me whatever you want to.” 

He hiked an eyebrow, and Tony was so tempted. “Later,” he replied firmly. “First, we’ve got some tentacles to lop off.”

**Author's Note:**

> For those who might be wondering: yep, my mental image of Tony as 'Hans' is pretty much RDJ as Hans in the wonderfully awful movie Friends and Lovers, as seen [here!](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/40/a7/0b/40a70b6b3cbf18ea4a7950ab6f1e4435.jpg) LOLOL.
> 
> 'Black diamond' is a skiing term for the hardest slopes.
> 
> The title is a song by the band Bullet for My Valentine, from an album ironically titled Venom. :D


End file.
